Learn more about our featured projects, including our second feature film, Armageddon Gospels.

Armageddon Gospels | Feature Film | 2018

Refugee gods, transposed to flesh and blood, wash ashore to rouse the myths of ancient England, half-drowned in a forgotten past. They disperse through shifting realities to awaken the giant Albion and find the holy grail in a ritual to save England from the rot of darkness and hatred that's strangling its soul. Written and directed by John Harrigan. Original score by Joanna Burke.

Armageddon Gospels is the second feature from FoolishPeople.

British Enough? | Immersive Theatre | 2017

BE Festival, Birmingham Rep

British Enough? You have been selected for testing within the British Enough Testing Zones, an immersive theatrical site-specific experience set in a future where British Citizenship is the ultimate prize. Enter a world where Britishness is manufactured and cultural identity must be won through ingenuity, endurance and psychological testing. 'British Enough?' is a collaboration between artist Kristina Cranfeld and John Harrigan, founder of FoolishPeople, exploring the physical and imagined spaces conjured by Brexit in the borderlands of Britain's future outside of the EU.

The Woods Trapped at the Edge of Midnight | 2015

The Wilderness Festival, Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire

Hidden deep within the forest in Cornbury Park is a secret. A camp, inhabited by gods, spirits and monsters; a sacred site that exists at the edge of midnight. Those lucky enough to enter are changed forever by what they experience within these rare and wondrous woods. You say the words, this secret belongs to you. Now you must share it, but who with? You know that this is the heart of the puzzle.

Spirit, human, monster, animal, demon. Every imaginable creature born of myth, fable and fairytale has been forced to retreat there. For in the very near future, this wilderness will be all that remains. One last forest, one last ritual. For in the forest at the edge of midnight, a new story waits to be born. Filled with power, love, anger and manifested from a great and extraordinary gathering. Where the creatures of myth and fairytale find strength in one another by accepting their place as fallen dreams. Your friends stand. Ready to follow you into the dark forest and to help you to change the fate of the last wilderness before midnight arrives. You have located the most precious and rarest of dreams, hidden within the minds of your friends, at this wild human gathering. Hope...

Now you must lead them to the other side of forever, beyond the border, deep within the forest, back to the camp before midnight arrives. Where a secret is hidden deep within the forest in Cornbury Park. A camp, inhabited by gods, spirits and monsters, a sacred site that exists at the edge of midnight. Where those who are lucky enough to enter are changed forever by what they experience within these rare and wondrous woods. Tick, tock, tick tock. Be you spirit or monster. God or mortal, you must stand with us, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, we shall face midnight together and give our story life.

Strange Factories | 2013

Writer and director John Harrigan, Cinema Museum, London

A writer, possessed by a terrifying story hunts for its secret heart in a mysterious landscape. He journeys into unknown, dreamlike places, haunted by the infamous Hum emitted from a strange factory.

Strange Factories is the first feature film by FoolishPeople. It was released on October 26, 2013. Strange Factories is available for purchase at strangefactories.vhx.tv/buy.

Virulent Experience | 2012

Writer and director John Harrigan, in partnership with Conway Hall Ethical Society, Conway Hall, London

Then:London, 2012: CCTV on every corner, missile batteries on the roof of council blocks for national security during the Olympiad. Every moment of your life logged and regulated by governments and corporations trying to sell you things through your smart-phone and browser while people you haven’t seen in years can follow your life moment by moment online.

Now:London, 2040: The Ministry of Information's Emotional Experience Act is in force. In an effort to stop the nation tearing itself apart, the government has instituted ENGLAND REBORN — for your Safety, Security & Sanity. Thanks to the Sure Heart implant technology gifted to newborn citizens, all disruptive, antisocial and negative emotions and rogue experiences are now prohibited, isolated and catalogued within the Virulent Museum of Human Experience via real time analysis of your lives.

No longer do the self destructive impulses of the nation manifest in the phenomenon known as Virulent Novelty. Always connected, never alone — watched over by the ubiquitous BLAKE.

Truly it is a Green and Pleasant Land.

On the eve of the London 2040 Olympics, FoolishPeople invite you to enter and explore the Museum in an immersive production combining theatre and art which highlights technology's impact on the mind, imagination and free will of human beings.

Ward 12 - The Basement | 2010

Co-writer and director John Harrigan, in partnership with Secret Cinema

The Basement - Ward 12 was created in partnership with Secret Cinema for the November 2010 presentation of Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Ward 12 explored the background and history of author Ken Kesey's participation in CIA MKULTRA Mind Control experiments conducted at Stanford University on the use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD and how this in turn influenced the themes of institutionalization and mind control explored in the book and film.

Ken Kesey's reported voluntary participation in the MKULTRA program 1959, his subsequent experimentation with drugs and his work as a night orderly at an asylum provided Kesey with the inspiration to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. These first steps led to the important role he played in the sixties counter culture movement. Ken Kesey became one of the main proponents of sixties drug culture, the hippie movement and an enthusiastic supporter of its aims to instigate an alternative world view.

Participants who entered Ward 12 at Secret Cinema were encouraged to take an active role in learning the truth of their own insanity. Were they part of a mythic MKULTRA test, or had they joined a family of patients who had fallen through the cracks of the system seeking escape via the basement beneath the Oregon State Hospital?

FoolishPeople's The Basement responded in real time to the expectations of the audience who were seeking to break the system. Unexpectedly, they found themselves in a world inhabited by archetypes and characters who may or may not be figments of the imagination. Or was it a psychoactive side effect and symptom caused by long term treatment with a cocktail of powerful antipsychotic medications?

Cirxus | 2009

Writer and director John Harrigan, The Arcola Theatre, London

Cirxus was a promenade performance in Arcola's new industrial space, Studio K. Cirxus is based on fact: the German Bremen University confirmed that radioactive contamination by Americium-241 found in some soil samples taken by Greenpeace 11.5 km south of Sellafield, were 400 times higher than those taken 11 km from Chernobyl. 51 years on, the villagers of Seascale still live with the ramifications of the accident at Pile 1 of the Windscale Works Atomic Energy Factory.

Dead Language | 2007

Writer and director John Harrigan, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

Platoons of the latest replicas of Banksy roam the landscape, led by General Clone Banksy, a talentless nobody who once found a sample of Banksy DNA on an empty spray can. A rowdy gang of Tracey Emins wrestle half a dozen dazed Andy Warhols to the ground. It is the future and all forms of art are free, perfect replicas exist of every masterpiece ever created, copyright and ownership are meaningless, ideas are cheap and replicated ad infinitum. Artists have realised that their own identity is the only thing they can own or control, so fans become clones of artists in order to spread their art/identity. One final piece of uncorrupted art remains, yet to be copied: a living story told by Neonate Muses. Come and experience the living story and see how the world died with FoolishPeople's immersive, evolving performance in the ICA theatre.